Steve Jobs reportedly called Android a "stolen product." If he was right, then …

According to his official biographer, Steve Jobs went ballistic in January 2010 when he saw HTC's newest Android phones. "I want you to stop using our ideas in Android," Jobs reportedly told Eric Schmidt, then Google's CEO. Schmidt had already been forced to resign from Apple's board, partly due to increased smartphone competition between the two companies. Jobs then vowed to "spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank to right this wrong."

Jobs called Android a "stolen product," but theft can be a tricky concept when talking about innovation. The iPhone didn't emerge fully formed from Jobs's head. Rather, it represented the culmination of incremental innovation over decades—much of which occurred outside of Cupertino.

Innovation within multitouch and smartphone technology goes back decades—the first multitouch devices were created in the 1980s—and spans a large number of researchers and commercial firms. It wouldn't have been possible to create the iPhone without copying the ideas of these other researchers. And since the release of Android, Apple has incorporated some Google ideas into iOS.

The "Digital Desk" in action, showing a pinch-to-resize gesture in 1991.

You can call this process plenty of names, some less than complimentary, but consumers generally benefit from the copying within the smartphone market. The best ideas are quickly incorporated into all the leading mobile platforms.

The current legal battles over smartphones are a sequel to the "look and feel" battle over the graphical user interface (GUI) in the late 1980s. Apple lost that first fight when the courts ruled key elements of the Macintosh user interface were not eligible for copyright protection. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, the courts have made it much easier to acquire software patents. Apple now has more powerful legal weapons at its disposal this time around, as do its competitors. Together, there's a real danger that the smartphone wars will end by stifling competition.

Multitouch in the lab

High-tech innovations are often developed by laboratory researchers long before they're introduced into the commercial market. Multitouch computing was no exception. According to Bill Buxton, a multitouch pioneer now at Microsoft Research, the first multitouch screen was developed at Bell Labs in 1984. Buxton reports that the screen, created by Bob Boie, "used a transparent capacitive array of touch sensors overlaid on a CRT." It allowed the user to "manipulate graphical objects with fingers with excellent response time."

In the two decades that followed, researchers experimented with a variety of techniques for building multitouch displays. A 1991 Xerox PARC project called the "Digital Desk" used a projector and camera situated above an ordinary desk to track touches. A multitouch table called the DiamondTouch also used an overhead projector, but its touch sensor ran a small amount of current through the user's body into a receiver in the user's chair. NYU researcher Jeff Han developed a rear-projection display that achieved multitouch capabilities through a technique called "frustrated total internal reflection."

While they refined multitouch hardware, these researchers were also improving the software that ran on it. One of the most important areas of research was developing a vocabulary of gestures that took full advantage of the the hardware's capabilities. The "Digital Desk" project included a sketching application that allowed images to be re-sized with a "pinch" gesture. A 2003 article by researchers at the University of Toronto described a tabletop touchscreen system that included a "flick" gesture to send objects from one user to another across the table.

By February 2006, Han brought a number of these ideas together to create a suite of multitouch applications that he presented in a now-famous TED talk. He showed off a photo-viewing application that used the "pinch" gesture to re-size and rotate photographs; it included an on-screen keyboard for labeling photos. He also demonstrated an interactive map that allowed the user to pan, rotate, and zoom with dragging and pinching gestures similar to those used on modern smartphones.

Commercializing multitouch

In 2004, a French firm called Jazzmutant unveiled the Lemur, a music controller many consider the world's first commercial multitouch product. The Lemur could be configured to display a wide variety of buttons, sliders, and other user interface elements. When these were manipulated, the device would produce output in the MIDI-like Open Sound Control format. It debuted in 2005 and cost more than $2,000.

The market for the Lemur was eventually undercut by the proliferation of low-cost tablet computers like the iPad. But Jazzmutant now licenses its multitouch technology under the name Stantum. It raised $13 million in funding in 2009.

Jeff Han also moved to commercialize his research, founding Perceptive Pixel in 2006. The firm focuses on building large, high-end multitouch displays and counts CNN among its clients. The DiamondTouch also became a commercial product in 2006.

Microsoft says its researchers have worked on multitouch technologies since 2001. Microsoft's Andy Wilson announced Touchlight, a multitouch technology using cameras and a rear projector, in 2004. Touchlight had an interface reminiscent of Minority Report — a three-dimensional object would be displayed on the screen and the user could rotate and scale it with intuitive hand gestures.

Wilson was also a key figure in developing Microsoft Surface, a tabletop touchscreen system that used a similar combination of a rear-projected display and cameras. According to Microsoft, the hardware design was finalized in 2005. Surface was then introduced as a commercial product in mid-2007, a few months after the iPhone was unveiled. It too used dragging and pinching gestures to manipulate photographs and other objects on the screen.

Another key figure in the early development and commercialization of multitouch technologies was Wayne Westerman, a computer science researcher whose PhD dissertation described a sophisticated multitouch input device. Unlike the other technologies mentioned so far, Westerman's devices weren't multitouch displays; they were strictly input devices. Along with John Elias, Westerman went on to found FingerWorks, which produced a line of multitouch keyboards that were marketed as a way to relieve repetitive stress injuries.

Fingerworks was acquired by Apple in 2005 and Westerman and Elias became Apple employees. Their influence was felt not only in the multitouch capabilities of the iPhone and the iPad, but also in the increasingly sophisticated multitouch capabilities of Mac trackpads.

Touchscreen phones

IBM's Simon, introduced in 1993, is widely regarded as the first touchscreen phone. It had a black-and-white screen and lacked multitouch capabilities, but it had many of the features we associate with smartphones today. Users dialed with a onscreen keypad, and Simon included a calendar, address book, alarm clock, and e-mail functionality. The e-mail app even included the ability to click on a phone number to dial it.

The Simon was not a big hit, but touchscreen phones continued improving. In the early 2000s, they gained color screens, more sophisticated apps, and built-in cameras. They continued to be single-touch devices, and many required a stylus for precise user input. Hardware keypads were standard. These phones ran operating systems from Microsoft, Palm, Research in Motion, and others.

April 2005 saw the release of the Neonode N1m. While lacking the sophistication of the iPhone, it had a few notable features. It was one of the few phones of its generation not to have a hardware keypad, relying almost entirely on software buttons for input. It supported swiping gestures in addition to individual taps. And it employed a "slide to unlock" gesture, almost identical to the one the iPhone made famous.

More sophisticated touchscreen interfaces began to emerge in 2006. In October, Synaptics unveiled the Onyx, a proof-of-concept color touchscreen phone that included a number of advanced features. While it may not have been a true multitouch device, its capacitive touch sensor included the ability to tell the difference between the user's finger and his cheek (allowing someone to answer the phone without worrying about accidental inputs) and to track a finger as it moved across the screen.

The Onyx's phone application had an intuitive conference calling feature, and the device included a music player, an interactive map, and a calendar.

That December, LG announced the LG Prada — beating the iPhone to market by several months. The two devices shared several common features. The Prada dispensed with a traditional keypad, relying on software buttons for most input. It included the ability to play music, browse the Web, view photos, and check e-mail.

The iPhone was finally unveiled in January 2007. LG accused Apple of copying its design, saying it was disclosed in September 2006 in order to compete for an IF Design Award (which it won). The accusation doesn't hold much credibility, however. Although the phones have undeniable similarities, the iPhone features a more sophisticated user interface. For example, the iPhone used the flick-to-scroll gesture now common on smartphones; the LG Prada used a desktop-style scroll bar. The two phones were likely developed independently.

664 Reader Comments

Android also stole iOS's terrible battery life, horribly inconsistent GPS/Bluetooth Support compared to feature phone implementations (there's still lots threads on Apple's website who have "mystery problems" with bluetooth equipment and GPS across the platform), and data vulnerabilities that weren't a problem on feature phones at all.

Your article is a nice technical description of the history of touch interfaces, but it appears to (intentionally?) totally miss the point of Jobs "stolen product" quote. It wasn't about imitation. Pretty much all modern smartphones imitate the iPhone at some level (and as you say, the iPhone imitated aspects of what came before). It was an accusation of betrayal, of backstabbing.

Obviously, Jobs isn't around to ask him what he meant, but again, Schmidt claims he recused himself from iPhone-related discussions on Apple's board. Do you think he was lying, or that Google got privileged information in some other way? It's theoretically possible that some kind of industrial espionage happened, but without concrete evidence there isn't really anything to write about.

...Further in the end doesn't this all boil down to software used to be more open but now you can get a patent? This seems to be the focus of the last few paragraphs after all, but somewhat out of place in the context of the greater article.

Right, the point of the article is that software innovation is incremental, and so it's hard to figure out who "the" inventor of key products behind a complex product like the iPhone is. Many different people and firms did work that helped make the iPhone possible, and it's better to let everyone compete in the marketplace rather than having the patent office arbitrarily give a monopoly to one company.

This. The article supports something that we ALL ought to be able to support: That feature-copying is good for the user. Apple and Microsoft have been feature-copying each other for decades now, and both OSX and Windows are much the better for it. Absolutely the same thing goes in the mobile world - Android may have taken some ideas from iOS, but hey, iPhone users, how're you liking your new notification bar?

The current patent system is horribly broken, and the "Patent Wars" we're seeing now is the *very* logical result of those defects. Software patents should be allowed, but as others have said (ooooo! I'm copying!!), a 3 year period is two or three *generations* in the software and smartphone world. That ought to be enough for anyone. And as for "design" patents, it's a shame the 1990's precedents against "look at feel" lawsuits didn't hold.

Now, off to grab some popcorn and watch all the fanboi (plural of fanboy, don't'cha know) completely ignore the factual history of the article and valiantly defend their own personal One True God. Whichever one that might be.

Apple's strength isn't necessarily originality of thought but refinement to the point of "nailing it." As long as they keep it up they have nothing to fear from copy cats. Witness the pathetic scramble to copy the Macbook Air.

Then why are they so rabid about litigating everyone and their mothers?

Even an idiot can see that smart phones looked and worked one way before the iPhone and then, after the iPhone's introduction, they all began to look and work pretty much just like the iPhone. Most of these simulants run Android, and that's the main reason Android was the target of Steve's ire.

Sure, an idiot can see that, but an intelligent person can understand that there actually wasn't a strict pre-iPhone/post-iPhone dichotomy that Apple fans like to pretend existed, and that in this situation, like virtually all others, innovation wasn't the result of a single genius party, but rather a complex set of cross-pollination that leads to far faster growth than any party could have accomplished on their own.

The iPhone changed the entire smartphone market. There was nothing like it before than, and just about every modern smartphone owes a debt to the iPhone.

Did Apple invent every thing that made the iPhone what it is? Of course not. Did certain features exist in other phones/products before the iPhone? Of course. Has Apple implemented many features into iOS that began on other platforms since the original iPhone. Of course.

But to try and deny that the iPhone changed the entire game is being ridiculous. You can most certainly draw a line pre iPhone and post iPhone.

This is why long ago I decided that rather than get emotionally involved in any particular company, I just embraced my love of technology as a whole. I'm more curious about how tech works and I like seeing what comes next. Who developed what first is a waste of my time. Let the patent lawyers battle that. Better yet, get rid of them. I try not to be blinded by my 'favorite' companies to not see progressive innovation from others.

It's like the fucking Olympics in here with the amount of goalpost movement and mental gymnastics going on by the Apple faithful to discredit this article that is based on fact.

Yes, the iPhone changed smartphones as we know them, and yes, Android did take parts of iOS and copy it, but the iPhone was not created in a vacuum, it also took parts of other tech and copied them.

I think the athletics begin with the article.

The premise appears to be something along the lines of "Android is no more 'stolen' than the iPhone, in that the iPhone brought together, polished and integrated a number a disparate technologies which were at varying levels of commercial development, plus a random grab bag of design cues and details that I found across a dozen manufacturers and a decade of work, into a cohesive whole that created a new kind of smart phone experience that has subsequently transformed the industry-- whereas Android took a look at the finished iPhone and did that, plus some enhancements (notably a better notification system)."

But to try and deny that the iPhone changed the entire game is being ridiculous. You can most certainly draw a line pre iPhone and post iPhone.

That depends VERY highly on what you want to say the iPhone "changed" (mind you, I love my iPhone). Before the iPhone was released, Windows Mobile 6 featured the following:

-touchscreen UI, featuring rows of icons (omg!)-browser-email-text-calendar-built-in music player than could sync with a desktop counterpart (Windows Media Player)-the ability to install 3rd party apps.

Spoiler: show

Now, you'll see from the screen shot two very important things:

One, the "grid of icons" concept was already established. Two, it was ugly as hell when Microsoft did it.

The only line I see drawn as pre/post iPhone is looks and multi-touch. The iPhone proved that OS design mattered, and that styli were not a good UI paradigm. Feature-for-feature? They iterated, not innovated. They brought existing standards (grid of icons) and made them better. But when it launched the iPhone was NOT as deep a system as it's competition. It was BETTER, but it was shallower in focus and ability. This isn't really a knock against it- in the long run, design trumped feature lists, as it always will. What's important to note though is that you had similar form factors, similar features, and even very similar interaction paradigms (select from grid of icons) on existing phones.

The iPhone made the entire category better, but it didn't just come out of nowhere, either. It's major "line in the sand" progress was in appearance, not function.

The iPhone changed the entire smartphone market. There was nothing like it before than, and just about every modern smartphone owes a debt to the iPhone.

Did Apple invent every thing that made the iPhone what it is? Of course not. Did certain features exist in other phones/products before the iPhone? Of course. Has Apple implemented many features into iOS that began on other platforms since the original iPhone. Of course.

But to try and deny that the iPhone changed the entire game is being ridiculous. You can most certainly draw a line pre iPhone and post iPhone.

Their role in the smartphone market was similar to Thomas Edison's role in the lightbulb (something most Apple fans would agree with before I explain further). Just for fun, I'd ask you to decide whether or not you agree before reading the spoilered part of my post.

Spoiler: show

Thomas Edison made a VERY minor change to existing lightbulbs (he changed the filament) that resulted in a huge change in the commercial viability of the lightbulb. This commercial change was so pronounced that it is largely claimed that Edison invented the lightbulb. However, this is very different from reality, as Edison's contribution was incredibly minor, and his change to the lightbulb was fairly short lived, as tungsten became the filament of choice for incandescent lightbulbs.

From the anti-Apple POV software patents are bad because they help Apple.

You have this whole thought process backwards and it is probably why you don't understand. People who are anti-software patent think Apple is an abuser of software patents, not the other way around.

Apple makes good devices and you'd have to go very far into the extremes to find someone who disputes that. But the fact that they make good devices doesn't excuse their business practices.

You think that people don't like your shiny device and are hunting for reasons to justify that and that just isn't the case. People have a lot of reasons to dislike companies, business practices, and extremist behavior; many of those reasons just happen to overlap with Apple.

Edit:

knbgnu wrote:

Their role in the smartphone market was similar to Thomas Edison's role in the lightbulb (something most Apple fans would agree with before I explain further).

Any time you see the phrase "Thomas Edison invented," you can mentally replace that with "Thomas Edison was somehow involved with the patenting of," and be closer to the truth.

There were two versions being designed and modeled. One was meant to compete with the then "rockstar" Crackberry...the other was "new" and almost completely touch-screen...

...and had *nothing* to do with the iPhone.

I don't believe this.

There are shots of the Blackberry ripoff prototype being "leaked" in Feb. 2007 at the World Mobile Congress. No shots or mention whatsoever of a touch screen version at that time. Not surprising, since the BB was the market leader at the time. In fact, the touch screen version doesn't surface until Nov of the same year, and lacks key touch screen functionality. Almost as though Google abandoned the BB prototype in favor copying the obvious successor to the BB and was scrambling to catch up.

Quote:

Quote from link:"...the release of the SDK with support for touch and large screens, as well as the release of this video and hardware reference design took place one month before the infamous photograph of the BlackBerry-esque device. "

Die, myth. Die.

Except that the Android SDK didn't support a touch-screen keyboard and used hardware buttons to scroll through menus to select items, just like on a Blackberry. The "touch screen" prototype was obviously the first attempt to switch from copying the BB to copying the IPhone. The real myth is that Google was concurrently developing a BB AND touch screen version. If they had, the touch screen version would have had better SDK support.

I mean, think about it, why would they develop both concurrently, and not ship both since they were both at such advanced stages? Maybe because they dumped the BB prototype and immediately began on developing the other form factor instead? When the iPhone was released there were still plenty of critics who believed the touchscreen keyboard would never work, why wouldn't Google explore that market if they been developing both all along?

My company has recently provided me a phone and allowed me to port my number to it. Unfortunately, the choices were "Blackberry" or "Apple". I chose the iPhone and am missing my Samsung Infuse greatly. The iPhone does not even allow you to add a contact to an auto-reject list. Overall, the interface is inferior to the Android. With the android, i could take a picture, touch said pic on my phone and a menu would appear that allowed me to upload to Facebook. With the iPhone, I have to go to the Facebook app and upload the pic.

This makes the lack of proper amount of credit given to Apple advancements in this field troubling.

Lack? I think you must be living in a world that demands all editorials to have a lot of praise to Apple.All of the advancements Apple has made, are their and are protected. Also all of the "... on a mobile multifunction device" "advancements" and showing of the recall button on a touchscreen device are also in that bunch. Problem is that Jobs never cared to give others any credit. Thus the statements like they invented multitouch with iPhone.

Even an idiot can see that smart phones looked and worked one way before the iPhone and then, after the iPhone's introduction, they all began to look and work pretty much just like the iPhone. Most of these simulants run Android, and that's the main reason Android was the target of Steve's ire.

Sure, an idiot can see that, but an intelligent person can understand that there actually wasn't a strict pre-iPhone/post-iPhone dichotomy that Apple fans like to pretend existed, and that in this situation, like virtually all others, innovation wasn't the result of a single genius party, but rather a complex set of cross-pollination that leads to far faster growth than any party could have accomplished on their own.

That you can't make a new high-tech product without using any previous research is pretty clear. However, using some previous ideas to create a product that is fundamentally different from anything that existed before, which is what Apple did, is something else than incrementally building on prior art, which is what Google did. In this sense Android is a copy whereas iPhone is not.

This is a bad article because it doesn't make a distinction between a fundamentally new product that Apple created and a myriad of small advancements that remained in research labs or became parts of obscure products that nobody cared about. It is crystal clear that before iPhone nobody but Apple succeded in putting together the right mix of hardware and software technologies to create a desirable smart phone. This sort of innovation is in a different league than anything mentioned in the article. The article should have given Apple credit for it.

I anyway hope that Apple will lose these patent wars because competition is good. Apple became the biggest and richest tech company in the world due to the success of iPhone, there is no need for the patent system to give them an even bigger reward. iPhone today is no doubt better because of the competition and ideas coming from Android.

Eric Schmidt was also on Apple's board of directors from August 2006 to August 2009. I think he might have seen the iPhone prior to Apple's 2007 announcement. This was one of the reasons Jobs was so pissed.

This. Jobs' statement isn't about Android being a "stolen product" from an IP perspective. It's a stolen product from an industrial espionage perspective.

Can't agree on that take.SJ is well known for being aggressive when another has a similar item concept, even if he was ot the originator. If the ground that Apple thinks it stands on was that solid, why does not Apple go directly after Google instead of trying to wage a war of attrition?

Another one of "those".... If you haven't noticed the date, it's 5 months after iPhone went on sale. Let alone the fact that they demonstrated the touch oriented device at the same time!

Exactly. This is after the iPhone. If there was a video showing Android with it's current interface before the iPhone then there wouldn't be any argument. This "touch oriented device" you speak of, take a look at it yourself in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... FJHYqE0RDg

The interface was a joke. Everything was controlled by hardware buttons apart from panning, it was Android with a touchscreen tacked on. This is what Google had designed before the iPhone came along, you may think it's a coincidence that Android changed from this to something similar to the iPhone shortly after this, but I do not.

That you can't make a new high-tech product without using any previous research is pretty clear. However, using some previous ideas to create a product that is fundamentally different from anything that existed before, which is what Apple did, is something else than incrementally building on prior art, which is what Google did. In this sense Android is a copy whereas iPhone is not.

Agreed. And this is the sense of the Picasso quote. When you copy something, you invest nothing of yourself in it. When you steal something, you make it your own. That's the difference.

When Jobs called Android a "stolen product" he meant something much more specific than the general "influenced by things which came before" which, yes, nearly everything is. He was accusing Google of a betrayal. He was accusing them of having used their positions of trust within Apple, right up to a seat on Apple's board, to copy and respond to Apple's ideas and Apple's business plans before they were publicly known (and likely in violation of at least the spirit of the agreements signed when agreeing to serve on Apple's board etc).

Edit: Note the difference in language between how Jobs had for years chided MS over imitating Apple's products ("start your copiers, Redmond" etc), and the language used to describe what, agree with him or not, Jobs clearly saw as a _betrayal_ of trust by Google. He wasn't simply accusing Google of being imitative. He was accusing them of being evil, of being backstabbers, betrayers, thieves. This article really misses the point.

I agree, the article mentions Schmidt was on the board while the iPhone was being developed. He never disclosed that google was developing a competing device. He didn't recluse himself from the discussions (which would have tipped Google's hand). That conflict of interest would definitely make many people want to take retaliatory action. Once the cat was out of the bag, but before Schmidt was off the board, the iPad development was kept from him [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-04-12/tech/30074076_1_first-android-phone-nexus-one-ipad]. Considering that Google was developing plans to directly compete against Apple, Schmidt should have resigned from the board as soon as he knew there was a conflict of interest.

That would make an interesting article - is there a reasonable stance where Schmidt could be in such conflict of interests and it not be wrong. What does Schmidt have to say about his conflict of interest, what does the law say about it?

Your article is a nice technical description of the history of touch interfaces, but it appears to (intentionally?) totally miss the point of Jobs "stolen product" quote. It wasn't about imitation. Pretty much all modern smartphones imitate the iPhone at some level (and as you say, the iPhone imitated aspects of what came before). It was an accusation of betrayal, of backstabbing.

Obviously, Jobs isn't around to ask him what he meant,

But fortunately you don't really have to ask. Just look at the decades of history of playful language directed toward companies Jobs believed were imitating Apple's products ("start your copiers, Redmond"). Compare it to how he spoke about Android ("stolen product") and about Google post-breakup. It's clear what he was referring to was a betrayal.

Quote:

but again, Schmidt claims he recused himself from iPhone-related discussions on Apple's board. Do you think he was lying, or that Google got privileged information in some other way? It's theoretically possible that some kind of industrial espionage happened, but without concrete evidence there isn't really anything to write about.

I think you're missing the whole history here. Google and Apple were buddy-buddy in those days, They were intimately connected in many of their projects. There was Google software shipping as included apps on the iPhone on Day 1 (back when essentially no one else had access to write native apps), and contracts signed between Apple and Google about ad revenue etc all before the iPhone launched. Silly as it may seem now, Apple back then saw Google as a trusted ally, with a complementary business model, and they treated them as a trusted partner to work with them on their developing iOS platforms from which they could both benefit (Apple from hardware revenue, Google from ad/search revenue). Jobs saw the appearance of Android in the form that it took, at the time when it appeared as clear evidence of betrayal of both personal and business trust (of course that's circumstantial evidence, not something he could get Google convicted for in a court of law). It could not be more obvious from his quotes that he took it personally. It wasn't anything like his reaction to other companies imitating Apple's products (including many other non-Android smartphones which quickly began imitating aspects of the iPhone), it was an accusation of betrayal, of using the privileged access of a trusted partner to steal ideas before they were public and stab Apple in the back. (I'm not saying I necessarily agree with Jobs here, just saying that he made his feelings clear).

Eric Schmidt was also on Apple's board of directors from August 2006 to August 2009. I think he might have seen the iPhone prior to Apple's 2007 announcement. This was one of the reasons Jobs was so pissed.

This. Jobs' statement isn't about Android being a "stolen product" from an IP perspective. It's a stolen product from an industrial espionage perspective.

You know that there are actually laws against that? If it was industrial espionage, then Apple could just sue Schmidt and/or Google.

Some commenters got it right. The bile is not from Android copying the iPhone, heck Apple is used to being copied. It's from the betrayal by Schmidt sitting on the board all those years, listening in on and discussing Apple's smartphone plans, then turning around and no doubt using all that information to help Google's Android project.

Even an idiot can see that smart phones looked and worked one way before the iPhone and then, after the iPhone's introduction, they all began to look and work pretty much just like the iPhone. Most of these simulants run Android, and that's the main reason Android was the target of Steve's ire.

Sure, an idiot can see that, but an intelligent person can understand that there actually wasn't a strict pre-iPhone/post-iPhone dichotomy that Apple fans like to pretend existed, and that in this situation, like virtually all others, innovation wasn't the result of a single genius party, but rather a complex set of cross-pollination that leads to far faster growth than any party could have accomplished on their own.

I am not in favor of all the legal wrangling going on by any means, but I think you are wrong on this completely. There is clearly a line in the sand: pre-iphone/post-iphone. It exists on a couple of fronts:

1. The interface. Sure touch interfaces exists, etc, etc. But Apple brought in all together in a uniquely personal and approachable manner. This includes not just multi-touch but the widgets that it used to make the touch commands feel more like real world physical interactions. Even the keyboard interaction. Nothing is new about a virtual keyboard but they way it all came together.

2. The relationship between carriers and phone manufactures. I owned two verizon phones before the iPhone. Both had verizons horrible symbian required interface. The carriers dictated far more control and Apple helped to free ALL manufactures. This isn't to say things wouldn't eventually get there. Clearly Google was dong the same thing here, but Apple was the first and they did it in one quick tangible way.

Point 1 is the definition of unpatentable though IIRC - simply bringing together existing technology is explicitly denited patentability is it not?

I'm not sure many people would see the iPhone restriction to a single carrier as an improvement - but the interface consistency is an example of why Apple is so successful.

This is an article well overdue. The reality is that Apple are brilliant at making products, and that the iPhone did bring lots of things together in a wonderful package that just feels 'right' - even compared to the most recent Androids. But their insistence that nobody can make anything that even looks like their product is absurd and destructive. But so much money has been spent keeping software patents on the books all over the world that I doubt they are going anywhere. Fuck promoting innovation I guess...

Even an idiot can see that smart phones looked and worked one way before the iPhone and then, after the iPhone's introduction, they all began to look and work pretty much just like the iPhone. Most of these simulants run Android, and that's the main reason Android was the target of Steve's ire.

Looks like you spent as much (or less) time on thinking as you did reading this article.Folk ,like you are a great reason for this article; you are being assumptive based on your paradigmed premise.

Do something different for a change; think it through before you reply.

Your article is a nice technical description of the history of touch interfaces, but it appears to (intentionally?) totally miss the point of Jobs "stolen product" quote. It wasn't about imitation. Pretty much all modern smartphones imitate the iPhone at some level (and as you say, the iPhone imitated aspects of what came before). It was an accusation of betrayal, of backstabbing.

Obviously, Jobs isn't around to ask him what he meant,

But fortunately you don't really have to ask. Just look at the decades of history of playful language directed toward companies Jobs believed were imitating Apple's products ("start your copiers, Redmond"). Compare it to how he spoke about Android ("stolen product") and about Google post-breakup. It's clear what he was referring to was a betrayal.

Ah, the interpretation of St. Jobs' teachings has begun. Darned quick, too. Most saints go decades before that starts happening.

You could purchase a product with no software at all and put a free mod of Linux (ubuntu) on it, and it would be basically the same as an apple product. Android is a free mod of Linux, therefore all phones are basically the same. This "stealing" idea is BS. Apple stands in the way of progress.

Apple is evil, it tries to make people purchase there products and only there products, via proprietary connections, etc. In Europe phones are required to be compatable, so apple was forced to release a 30 pin to usb adapter for there phone. You can't buy it in the U.S. though, and in Europe you will have to ask for it because they hide them in the back of the stores.

The iPhone changed the entire smartphone market. There was nothing like it before than, and just about every modern smartphone owes a debt to the iPhone.

Did Apple invent every thing that made the iPhone what it is? Of course not. Did certain features exist in other phones/products before the iPhone? Of course. Has Apple implemented many features into iOS that began on other platforms since the original iPhone. Of course.

But to try and deny that the iPhone changed the entire game is being ridiculous. You can most certainly draw a line pre iPhone and post iPhone.

Their role in the smartphone market was similar to Thomas Edison's role in the lightbulb (something most Apple fans would agree with before I explain further). Just for fun, I'd ask you to decide whether or not you agree before reading the spoilered part of my post.

Spoiler: show

Thomas Edison made a VERY minor change to existing lightbulbs (he changed the filament) that resulted in a huge change in the commercial viability of the lightbulb. This commercial change was so pronounced that it is largely claimed that Edison invented the lightbulb. However, this is very different from reality, as Edison's contribution was incredibly minor, and his change to the lightbulb was fairly short lived, as tungsten became the filament of choice for incandescent lightbulbs.

If you are trying to say Apple's contribution to the modern smartphone is "a VERY minor change", you are extremely mistaken.

Sorry to pick on you, nothing personal, but I am damn sick and tired of people comparing Android designed for non touch input devices to iPhone. If you are going to even to try to be fair, compare iPhone to a multi touch Android device. Of course there is a big difference in the example you gave. Touch interfaces completely change the design paradigm. iOS was designed for touch from the start. Android existed before touch interfaces were available. /rant

I don't know much about the timeline of these things, but the link I posted was 9 months after the iPhone was shown off by Apple, and Apple weren't the first with a touchscreen phone. Touch interfaces existed long before Google showed this version of Android off. Android was probably started long before 2007 (I think Google acquired it in 2005?) but that's irrelevant, Android changed drastically after the iPhone was released. Are you saying that Google would have scrapped that non touchscreen version of Android and redesigned it for touchscreen devices if Apple had not released the iPhone?

"Android changed drastically after the iPhone was released", wow you were at Google when they made that call, cool! You were actually there in the room when they held up an iPhone and said go forth and copy. Wow!So why did you say "I don't know much about the timeline of these things", if you were there? You lived the timeline!!

Some commenters got it right. The bile is not from Android copying the iPhone, heck Apple is used to being copied. It's from the betrayal by Schmidt sitting on the board all those years, listening in on and discussing Apple's smartphone plans, then turning around and no doubt using all that information to help Google's Android project.

You could purchase a product with no software at all and put a free mod of Linux (ubuntu) on it, and it would be basically the same as an apple product. Android is a free mod of Linux, therefore all phones are basically the same. This "stealing" idea is BS. Apple stands in the way of progress.

Apple is evil, it tries to make people purchase there products and only there products, via proprietary connections, etc. In Europe phones are required to be compatable, so apple was forced to release a 30 pin to usb adapter for there phone. You can't buy it in the U.S. though, and in Europe you will have to ask for it because they hide them in the back of the stores.

You could purchase a product with no software at all and put a free mod of Linux (ubuntu) on it, and it would be basically the same as an apple product. Android is a free mod of Linux, therefore all phones are basically the same. This "stealing" idea is BS. Apple stands in the way of progress.

Apple is evil, it tries to make people purchase there products and only there products, via proprietary connections, etc. In Europe phones are required to be compatable, so apple was forced to release a 30 pin to usb adapter for there phone. You can't buy it in the U.S. though, and in Europe you will have to ask for it because they hide them in the back of the stores.

I miss the good old days, when the Linux diehards at least knew what they were talking about.